March 2025
- Cara
- Apr 3
- 3 min read
The flowers have started to arrive in earnest! It took ages this year, but they always come eventually.
The first daffodil fully bloomed on March 25th. The hellebores are also coming into their own and mostly looking great. Although, there are a handful of plants that are coming back very slowly with less growth. I think maybe it was the fall drought coupled with the harsh winter? I'll have to baby them a bit this year to see if I can get them to recover.
I went back to the last blog post to look at my little checklist of things I said I was going to do this month. As a reminder my goals for March were:
(1) plant out ranunculus ✓ (2) clean up hellebore foliage from last year ✓ (3) start more seeds ✓ (4) work on new raised beds -- stain the planks (5) watch the new season of Gardeners World. ✓
Well 4 out of 5 isn't too bad. (I know watching Gardener's World is not actual work, but I maintain the validity of putting it on my gardening to do list.)
The ranunculus got hardened off for about 2 weeks, and then went into raised beds on March 13th. I haven't needed to protect them at all. The plants did go through a lot more shock than I expected, but they seem to like their new home because they've rebounded with loads of new growth. I think the lesson here is to find a way to skip the 3" pot step or keep them in small pots for a shorter time. But this involves figuring out protection for them in some way so they can be planted out in January or February. Tbd.
The hellebores have also gone through quite the transformation — from trashy looking beds of damaged leaves, to nearly bare soil, to fluffy looking plants all in 4 weeks!
Also I finally planted some Katharine Hodgkin dwarf irises last fall. I have always wanted these for the blue garden, and it made me SO happy to see them this spring. Can you believe this is a real flower?!
So what's up for next month?
APRIL
Bump Up Seedlings: Many of the seedlings I started last month have started to form their true leaves, so I need to move them into their own pots. It's supposed to be rainy & cold this weekend, so that is high on my to do list.
Transplant Cold Hardy Seedlings: My foxglove, violas, and forget-me-nots are in various stages of being hardened off. I'm looking to plant these out by mid April. The plan for the violas is to under plant them in a bed that will get cafe au lait dahlias in May after there's no chance of frost. The dahlias get extremely tall, and I usually cut off all the bottom foliage to prevent fungal problems. So it leaves a lot of empty bed below. This year I am trying violas in that empty space.
Raised Bed Construction: Maybe I will actually get around to staining the boards for the raised beds for the veggies? I really need to. The potatoes have been chitted. The spinach has been started. And the carrots are supposed to get direct sown this month! Also, the previously built raised beds need fresh compost for this year's flowers. I have the compost. It's just the carrying it to the beds part...
**The Great Front Hill Terracing Project**: This is a long time coming, but I finally decided (aka conceded to my husband's very sensible suggestion) that we will terrace our very steep front hill. Not only does it get loads of weeds that are impossible to keep up with because of the difficulty in working on that slope, it also has THE.WORST.INVASIVE.PERENNIALS. A previous owner planted perennial sweet pea (laythrus latifolius), which I initially thought was lovely until I realized how aggressive it is and how impossible it is to remove. I don't care what weeds you've dug up in your lifetime. I am telling you that you have never seen a tap root like these plants have. And then there's the cypress spurge (euphorbia cyparissias). This plant is actually now banned from being sold in NY state because it is so invasive. So when we terrace the front hill, we're going to clear out all current top growth, and then lay down multiple layers of cardboard topped with really thick mulch to try and starve the roots of sunlight. Wish us luck. We're going to need it. Also if you're local, send me your cardboard!
Thanks for reading!
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